Chapter 39: Exile
March
Well, it's been a crazy past few weeks. I don't know my ass from my elbow.
Peyton finally came back to school, but she'd barely even look at me. When she walked into Pickle's classroom, I was already there, sitting at our table.
She approached Ms. Pickle. "Can I change partners?" Even though she asked quietly, I could still hear her, mostly because I was eavesdropping.
"Why?"
She looked down at her perfect feet.
"Peyton?" Ms. Pickle was trying to look her in the eye, but Peyton just gazed at her torso, at the picture of a pickle standing next to the words "Dill With It."
"I can't just swap your partner. That would break up another pair in the class. It's not fair to the other students."
"Okay. Could you just maybe ask for volunteers? Maybe someone else wants to switch?"
Pickle sniffed, glanced over at me. "I'll see what I can do. We are starting a new unit. So maybe a shake-up is in order."
When class began, she made an announcement.
"Okay people. We're starting our textiles unit today. Maintenance, care, and cleaning. There's a whole world of laundry beyond separating lights from darks. And please choose a new fellow sojourner for your journey into the land of fabrics. If you can't find a suitable associate, let me know, and I'll pair you up."
Peyton wandered over to Toby.
"Hey, Tobster. Wanna be my partner?"
His big blue eyes lit up, and a smile spread across his freckled face. "Sure."
Of course he wants to be your partner. Who wouldn't?
Toby took Peyton's sister Emma to homecoming. She used him up and tossed him aside. Poor guy. They dated from October until January when Cash started showing interest in her again. Then she gave him the old heave ho.
I felt a little sorry for him. Those Thomas girls are hard to get over.
So, I got paired with Hillary, Bree's best gal-pal.
My gaze kept drifting over to Peyton though. I think she was pretending not to notice.
After an hour of learning various tactics for sewing buttons on a variety of textiles, we were dismissed. I tried to catch up to her in the hall, but Marshall was waiting for her already.
He hadn't left her side in days, always there for her between every class.
She was really starting to worry me. It was worse than the fall, after Cash attacked her. Worse than when she was the target of a smear campaign, falsely accused of inappropriate sexual relations with other players on the team and bullied relentlessly.
"Peyton!" I called. They both turned and watched me approach. Marshall looked annoyed. Peyton looked lost.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey," she whispered, casting her eyes to the ground.
"Can I talk to you?"
"Okay." She moved closer to me.
"Hey, Man," I said to Marshall. "Can you just give us a minute? We're trying to talk."
Peyton bristled, her demeanor shifting from sad to angry. "Aren't you afraid one of your fiancé's spies will see you alone with me?"
"Not at all." I glanced at Marshall. He put his hands on the straps of his backpack and stood there, his eyes daring me to tell him to leave again.
I turned back to Peyton. "You okay?"
"Yeah," she said very unconvincingly.
"You seem upset about something."
"Yeah. Lots of things. Take your pick."
"Like what?"
"Nothing. I'm not your problem anymore. So you don't hafta worry about me."
"You were never my problem. Peyton. Talk to me."
"You can't marry her," she finally managed to choke out.
I sighed, turned my face to the window and studied the trees, newly budded and bursting with life. "I have to."
"No, you don't. You don't have to. And I'm not saying this for my sake. Or even for yours. Marriage is hard enough when two people start out in love. But to enter into a lifelong bond with nothing more than a sense of duty? It's doomed to fail. And you won't be the only ones who suffer. That baby you're marrying her for, that baby is going to grow up. That baby is going to be a teenager someday. And he's going to figure it out."
"Figure what out?"
"That his parents never loved each other. And that knowledge...well, that's going to hurt him."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm just saying. He will suffer, one way or another. It's inevitable."
I just stared at her. It sounded a lot like she's going through stuff that had nothing to do with me. And it also sounded like she had no intention of telling me what that was.
"Peyton, you ready to go to football?" Marshall asked her, ignoring me.
She looked at him and back to me, briefly.
"Yeah. Let's go. I don't have anything else to say." She paused, squeezed my hand briefly. As they were walking away, Marshall draped his arm around her shoulders, protectively.
I feel like I'm in exile in my own country.
Then there's Bree.
At first, we were in this huge hurry to get everything arranged for our wedding because she wanted to get married like asap. So Ma was calling about the church and the reception to try to schedule something in April. But then a couple of weeks went by, and boom, she puffed up like stove-top Jiffy Pop overnight. And when she went wedding dress shopping, she hated how all the dresses fit her. Said her ass was getting wide and she looked like a giant cow. So she pivoted and wanted to wait to get married. She started talking about how we could do it after the baby was born this summer.
I honestly don't know what's worse, drawing this whole thing out, or ripping off the band-aid.
And then there's the baby. I finally felt it kick, which was actually super cool. But we still don't know if it's a boy or a girl, and Bree won't go to the doctor for an ultrasound or anything.
We had a pretty heated debate about it.
"I did go to the doctor," she said. "With Gram at the beginning, and then the adoptive couple paid for my visit right before I came back. Everything was great. Right on track."
"Yeah, but aren't you supposed to go every two weeks or something?"
"Not yet. That's later," she said, studying her nails.
"When?"
"Uh, last trimester I think." She sighed, looking down. "My feet are so swollen. Ugh."
I took a deep breath and tried to remain calm. "And how far along are you? Let's see...you got pregnant on homecoming. So, October 22nd." I did some quick counting on my fingers. "So that makes you nineteen weeks."
"Twenty-one," she said, correcting me.
"Twenty-one?" I did the math again. "I still count nineteen."
"They don't count from the day you conceive. It's from the day of your last period."
"But, you're not even pregnant then...because you haven't even ovulated yet."
She looked up at the ceiling and nodded. "Right."
"I don't understand menstrual math," I said shaking my head. "But I do know at twenty weeks they do an ultrasound."
"Usually, yes." She seemed to be losing patience with me. Which was hilarious, since I was all out of patience for her.
"To assess the size and health," I continued. "And sometimes determine gender."
"How do you know so much about this?" She scrunched her eyebrows together.
"Home Ec," I told her. "We studied the feeding and care of infants. Including prenatal care."
I thought back to Patrick Mahomes and Lil' Peyton and just about disappeared from the room for a while. I imagined it was Peyton who got pregnant and how funny she'd be about everything with her dry sense of humor and zero nurturing instincts. But she would be responsible. He'd be a boy, and we'd name him Pax. She would take care of him because she knows how precious life is. She would take him to the doctor because she knows how important it is to get the care you need when you need it, because she lost someone she loved more than anything in the world when he didn't get the care he needed.
I felt my eyes start to water.
"Chap? You okay?"
"Yeah. I'm okay." Then I took a deep breath. "I think you should see a doctor, Bree."
"Ultrasounds are expensive. And you know I don't have insurance."
"Gram canceled your policy?"
She shrugs. "Probably not. But I'd need her card, and I don't want to go groveling back to her."
"Our baby is more important than your pride, but if you don't wanna do that, then let my parents pay for it."
"No. I'm not taking their charity."
Oh my God, this girl.
"This is their grandchild, Bree. It's not charity."
She set her mouth in a grim line.
"Okay, then let me pay for it. I can work extra shifts here."
"No, Chap. You have football and school. You're going to college, right? We need to focus on that."
I skipped my response to that argument, mostly because I didn't want to let her in on all the stress I've been feeling. First of all, I quit the seven-man football team. It all seems so useless now. I have bigger things to focus on. And how the hell am I supposed to go to college and support a family? I can't, so my dad came up with a plan—I'll work on the ranch to support Bree and the baby. Ma and Dad are letting us have one of the cabins we use for the seasonal workers. It's a little run down, but it has two bedrooms. My parents promised to fix it up so it's suitable for the baby and Bree, who will probably hate it. But I guess it's not any worse than living in her dad's trailer.
Anyway, I had no intention of getting into all of that when my main concern was getting her to the doctor. "You gotta work with me here, Bree."
"Okay, fine. I'll talk to my Gram."
"When?"
"Soon, Chap! Please stop pressuring me!"
*****
So I've been pretty down lately. Just off-kilter. I think my family has started to notice.
Ma came up to me in the kitchen the other day when I was staring blankly into the refrigerator.
She said "Jack? Baby, are you alright?"
"Yeah." I sighed. "I'm fine."
"You sure? You look a little bit...sad, lost."
I just nodded. I didn't even deny it.
I am sad.
I am lost.
Then couple days ago, my brother Jesse found me in the stable where I was brushing Redbo, sort of staring off into the distance as I moved the brush in long strokes through his mane.
"Hey, Jack," he said. "You got anything going on for spring break?"
I shook my head. "Spring break?" I don't even know what my plan is at any given moment, much less spring break. I'd completely forgotten about it.
"Yeah. Ma says it's next week. Anyway, Dad asked me to head down to the rodeo and livestock show they're running in the Rio Grande Valley. Joe will be there with his team. Thought maybe you'd wanna join me. I can show you the ropes at auction."
Jesse does all the purchasing of livestock, so it makes sense that he'd be going to the auction. But he's never invited me along on one of his trips. It could be because I'll be working with him a lot more now that it'll be my fulltime job. But there's something weird about the way he said it that didn't seem like him. I don't know what it was, but I almost got the feeling that they're all in cahoots because they sense something's really wrong with me. I think they were trying to do something about it but didn't know what to do.
Hell, I don't know what to do.
I thought about it. I thought about sitting home for a whole week without anything else to do but think about my pending nuptials. Or this baby I'm about to have and somehow try to take care of.
So, I said, "sure, sounds good."
"Yeah," he replied. "Let's just get out of here for a while. All the problems will still be here when we get back."
Problems? Jesse doesn't have any problems because he's not a complete moron like I am. So, he must have been referring to my problems, of which there is no shortage.
"How far away is it?" I asked him.
"It's right down by the border, so about a seven-hour trip with your old grandad behind the wheel," he said, grinning. We always joke about my brother Jesse because he drives like an old man. He's very cautious and responsible, nothing like Joe. Ma says it's because Jesse has always had an old soul. Growing up, I thought of him like a second father because he made me feel safe. Loved. Jesse always took care of me, especially during the hard times with Dad.
Out of nowhere, I flashed back to a conversation I once had with Ma.
*****
"Does Jesse have a backbone?"
"What do you mean, baby?"
"Well, whenever Dad starts drinking, Jesse always hides with me. Joe says it's because he's a...a pussy," I whispered.
Ma shook her head in frustration. "Joe. That boy. It's always gunpowder on a fire with him."
"It's not Joe's fault."
"No, it's not. But here we are, living in a tinderbox, and all he can think to do is pour gasoline."
"So, it's better to hide than to fight?"
"There's a time for everything. Sometimes you have to fight to protect the ones you love. But that's what Jesse was doing. I told him to stay with you. Whenever your dad flew into one of his rages. Jesse was just doing what I asked."
"Do you think Dad's ever coming back?"
"I don't know, Jack. It's really up to him. He's got a lot of reckoning to do. He may eventually come around."
"Do you miss him?"
"I miss the man that I know is still in there somewhere," she said.
"I miss that man, too."
"Aw, baby. I know you do. You've got such a kind heart. Always looking out for me. And for your brothers. But you're just a boy. That's not your job. Someday, it will be. But for now, I need you to try not to worry. I know it's hard."
"Do you think we'll get by without him?"
"We'll get by. I been working on a ranch since I was nine, about your age. And I've got my boys. Y'all are such a blessing to me."
"So, we don't need him?"
"Of course we need him. But not when he's like this. I believe your dad will come back to us. And if he does, he won't ever hurt you again, not if I can help it. I never should have let it go on that long. I just kept hoping he would get through wallowing in self-pity and be the man I married. A man's job is to care for his children. Protect them. To be strong when things get tough. Not to let his own selfishness threaten his family."
I nodded. Ma hugged me close and kissed my hair.
"You're a good boy, Jack Chaplin. And you'll grow up to be a good man. I know in my heart that you'll always protect your own."
"Yes ma'am," I whispered. "I promise."